Pictou Island woman rescues raven

PICTOU ISLAND – It wasn’t a midnight dreary, and it wasn’t tapping at her chamber door.

Anne Chaldecott recently nursed a raven into better health before sending the injured bird to a wildlife rehabilitation centre near Dartmouth. SUBMITTED

Anne Chaldecott recently rescued a raven on Pictou Island after her golden retriever found it while out on a walk.

Her dog, Hobbes, started sniffing the moving bird.

As Chaldecott got closer, she saw that he could hardly walk, picked him up and brought him into her house.

“I don’t think it would have survived another night out in the cold,” she said.

Although bearing little resemblance to Edgar Allen Poe’s poem ‘The Raven,’ Anne Chaldecott couldn’t think of a more apt name than Edgar for her rescue.

Rescuing the raven was a bit of a natural reaction for Chaldecott.

“We’re conscious of wildlife because we’re so surrounded by it,” she said.

After putting Edgar in a box, she called the Hope for Wildlife Society, a rehabilitation centre for wildlife in Seaforth, N.S.

“They were so good. They told me what to give him,” she said. They advised a diet of hardboiled eggs and canned fish.

After refusing to eat for the first day, Edgar quickly began munching on all that he could.

With Chaldecott’s nursing, he went from being unable to get up to snapping at her when he left a few days later, which she thought was a good sign.

The founder of Hope for Wildlife, Hope Swinimer, was impressed with Chaldecott’s tender care for the injured bird.

Swinimer said they often get calls from people who come across hurt animals, and let them know where to find it, which is great in itself.

She said it was especially great to hear how Chaldecott had nursed Edgar into better health.

Edgar travelled to Seaforth via plane, and two different vehicles.

Chaldecott sent Edgar out on the next mail plane that came to the island on to the possession of a volunteer for the society, waiting for the bird at the Trenton airport.

The facility has a dispatch group, that anyone can join with a small amount of training, that picks up wildlife from around the province.

They post whenever there is an animal that needs to be transported, and whoever is closet, picks it up.

Edgar was picked up at the Trenton airport in a banana box, driven past Truro, and finally transferred to another volunteer before making it all the way to the facility just outside of Dartmouth.

Swinimer said she hadn’t known much about Pictou Island until they went to make the arrangements, and she realized they wouldn’t be able to send a volunteer to pick up the bird.

“It sounds like paradise.”

Edgar still has a number of issues, and is on pain medication and antibiotics.

“He’s showing suspension of something in his hip,” she said, noting that his feet are also swollen.

However, he seems to be progressing, and is eating well, Swinimer said.

He is only one of at least two-dozen birds at the facility right now.

“It’s unusual to be this full,” Swinimer said.

They’re currently housing another raven, a snowy owl, a red-tailed hawk, robins, a bald eagle, ducks, as well as other animals like seal pups, foxes, raccoons, and flying squirrels in their multi-building facility.